Blog posts

I haven’t posted very much lately because we went into lockdown/stay at home, came out of it for two weeks and we are back into lockdown/grey zone on Monday. People here just can’t seem to get the idea you should stay home and away from each other! Our Covid numbers have just exploded in the last week or so. We have had more cases in February than we did all of 2020! Ok rant over and back to bread!

  It has been a while since I baked a porridge bread.  I am a big fan of the moist and flavorful crumb I get.  I added some onions directly into the porridge which helps impart a mild onion flavor.  I used some freshly milled whole wheat and rye along with KAF bread flour.

Today is the day have been waiting for: homentaschen day! I already shared my sourdough adaptation of my grandma's recipe for homentaschen (https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66330/grandmas-poppy-seed-roll-sourdough), and this time I actually shaped them properly. As usual, I had more dough than poppy seed filling, and turned the extra dough into mini cinnamon buns.

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(From comments to another user.)

I too experienced what you call the bubble gum effect. I called it "gooey gluey paste".

If I may...:

There are three steps needed:

1. don't give it all the hydration at once. If you give it all the water at once, the finer particles or the bran locks up the water, and it will never leave the glue state.  However, even with the lower hydration, it will be gummy/gluey, but only temporarily so.

My WW durum (store bought, roller milled, Sher Fiber Wala) is like this:

The last few loaves have been an experiment in varying the flour that is used together with a white bread flour base. All of these breads are 80% white bread flour; the experiment is in varying the remaining 20% to be either chakki atta (Indian stoneground wholewheat), unsifted wholewheat (without germ), wholegrain spelt, semolina or rye.

@hanseata 's Aroma bread has been on my "need to bake" list for a while, and it seemed like a good time to give it a try. I scaled it down to make 1 loaf. My version: 

340 gm home milled spelt

107 gm home milled rye

57 gm medium grind cornmeal

67 gm mix of pumpkin and sesame seeds, toasted1 Tbsp poppy seeds

7 gm fine sea salt

1/4 tsp instant yeast

475 gm water

My Hot Cross Bun Recipe

Here is a hot cross bun recipe I worked on last year, as I felt many recipes I looked at had room for improvement.

It combines elements from two classic commercial breadmaking books (Manna by Walter Banfield published 1938 and Kirkland's The Modern Baker published 1908). Other sources of inspiration were Rossnroller's TFL recipes and a few of my own ideas.

Key points are:

use of a true flying sponge to get the yeast nice and active

I was encouraged to try this bake, and with the recent activity in the 5-grain Levain CB thread, I decided to give it a go.  Wow, learning curves galore on this one.  First time baking the bread.  First time using inclusions.  First time using a soaker.  Mistake transcribing the formula to my spreadsheet caused a big mess in the first attempt on Saturday.  A few curveballs today.  It was a weekend of ups and downs, and won't have the verdict for at least another few hours. :-)